Ecology

Special Abilities

Amnesia (Su) Once per day as a standard action, a yithian can attempt to inflict amnesia on a target it is able to communicate telepathically with. A target can resist this attack with a DC 23 Will save. If the target fails its save, it takes a permanent –4 penalty on Will saving throws and all skill checks and loses all memories save for those the yithian chooses to leave intact. This effect can be cured by heal or greater restoration. This is a mind-affecting insanity effect. The save DC is Charisma-based.

Deadly Pincers (Ex) A yithian always applies 1-1/2 times its Strength modifier to damage dealt by its pincer attacks, and deals triple damage on a critical hit. Pincers are primary attacks for yithians.

Item Creation (Ex) A yithian possesses the ability to create exotic and powerful items that blur the line between magic and technology, given time and resources. This ability allows a yithian to ignore all of the Item Creation feat requirements and spellcasting requirements for creating a magic item. The resulting item is always yithian technology (see below), built for their claws and tendrils to manipulate.

Mind Swap (Su) As a full-round action, a yithian can trade minds with another living creature it is able to communicate telepathically with. This functions as magic jar, except the two minds trade bodies. An unwilling target can resist the mind swap with a DC 23 Will save, after which that particular yithian cannot attempt to swap minds with that creature again for 24 hours. The yithian can end the effect of this mind swap at any time and over any distance as a full-round action, instantly returning both minds to the proper bodies; if the yithian wishes, it may attempt to use its amnesia power on the other mind as a free action when it ends the mind swap in this way. With the aid of singular technological devices, yithians can swap minds with targets in other times as well, although this procedure often leaves the traveling minds disoriented for a period, so yithians use it only under controlled conditions. This is a mind-affecting effect. The save DC is Charisma-based.

Scholar (Ex) Yithians treat all knowledge skills as class skills.

The “great race” was so-called because it was the only natural terrestrial species to conquer time and extinction. Rather than travel physically through time, those of the great race are known instead to project their minds across eons, swapping minds with members of their target species. This gives the great race an ideal means of studying other races and other times whilst avoiding easy detection, and it is also how the great race has escaped extinction. By its knowledge of all time, both future and past, it knows when its current form will become untenable. Before this happens, the great race transfers its minds—as a whole—to the chosen species, which then becomes its new form. Their victims have their minds sent back into the bodies of the great race: confused, shocked, and on the brink of extinction, where they speedily meet their doom.

Thus the great race, despite their glories, literally wipe out an entire species (at least mentally, culturally, and spiritually) each time they move on.

The Great Race of the Past

The true origin of the great race is lost to antiquity, but eons ago, they dwelt on a planet named Yith. As a result they are often called Yithians, but even Yith was not their original home. They once inhabited the bodies of large invertebrates with a massive brain capacity and great potential, and this is the form they are usually pictured in.

In their most recent incarnation, this species has a basically cone-shaped body and moves along on a complex foot like that of a mollusk. Near the top of the cone, four boneless limbs twists forth: two ended in sharpened powerful claws, one in a cluster of sense organs and delicate tentacles used for fine manipulation, while the last ends in cone-shaped tubes used for feeding. The creature’s huge brains were at the top of the cone, centered between the limbs. The great race is immensely intelligent: a typical specimen’s brain weighs over 200 pounds and is actually more efficient, neuron-for-neuron, than the human brain.

Yithians are massive—typically standing over 3 meters tall and weighing 4 or more tons—and very long-lived. Of course, an individual Yithian can always evade death by mind-switching with another creature. If a Yithian’s body is killed before it can switch minds, it does indeed die.

The great race tamed dinosaurs, pterosaurs, sea reptiles, and other primeval monsters, often controlling these beasts via electronic implants. Their preferred tools, however, were technological. They were not unified and often fought civil wars amongst themselves, as well as battling other powerful primeval species, such as the elder things, serpent folk, flying polyps, and starspawn.

Relationships with Humanity

The great race periodically sends scouts to take over human bodies in order to investigate and record human progress. They have fostered a sort of cult to assist them in this, and reward their followers with advanced knowledge and secrets from the entirety of time. Unfortunately, they are also preyed upon by enemies, such as the cult of the Yellow Sign, who try to capture members of the great race in human form, and torture them to gather their secrets.

In general, the great race acts as a neutral observer of human antics, but they may occasionally try to drive events in a direction which is beneficial to them.

Ecology

Special Abilities

Amnesia (Su) Once per day as a standard action, a yithian can attempt to inflict amnesia on a target it is able to communicate telepathically with. A target can resist this attack with a DC 23 Will save. If the target fails its save, it takes a permanent –4 penalty on Will saving throws and all skill checks, and loses all memories save for those the yithian chooses to leave intact. This effect can be cured by heal or greater restoration. This is a mind-affecting insanity effect. The save DC is Charisma-based.

Beetle Scout (Ex) A future yithian can send a single individual out of its swarm to observe. The individual has the same stats as the whole future yithian with the following changes: Type aberration; Space 2-1/2 ft.; hp 18; no hypnotic luminescence or swarm manipulation abilities; Melee bite +17 (1d3+2 plus 1d6 acid and poison); Ranged toxic jet +23 (1d6 acid plus poison); CMB +13; CMD 32. The future yithian can only control either its swarm or its scout each round, leaving the other effectively mindless and operating under simple, instinctive directions left by the yithian's mind when it changed control. No distance or planar boundary blocks their connection.

Distraction (Ex) A future yithian can nauseate creatures it damages. Any living creature that takes damage from a future yithian is nauseated for 1 round; a DC 23 Fortitude save negates the effect. This is a Constitution-based effect.

Hive Mind (Su) A future yithian maintains its mind as a telepathic union of thousands of beetle-like aberrations. It can be targeted as a single normal creature by mind-affecting effects.

Hypnotic Luminescence (Ex) A future yithian can communicate by luminescent organs in its beetles. In addition, as a standard action, it can produce a dizzying display of lights that fascinates all creatures that can see it within 300 feet. A successful Will save against DC 23 negates each effect. The future yithian can make a suggestion to up to five fascinated creatures as the spell if it can communicate telepathically with them (Will negates DC 23).

Item Creation (Ex) A yithian possesses the ability to create exotic and powerful items that blur the line between magic and technology, given time and resources. This ability allows a yithian to ignore all of the Item Creation feat requirements and spellcasting requirements for creating a magic item. The resulting item is always yithian technology (see sidebar), built for their claws and tendrils to manipulate.

Mind Swap (Su) As a full-round action, a yithian can trade minds with another living creature it is able to communicate telepathically with. This functions as magic jar, except the two minds trade bodies. An unwilling target can resist the mind swap with a DC 23 Will save, after which that particular yithian cannot attempt to swap minds with that creature again for 24 hours. The yithian can end the effect of this mind swap at any time and over any distance as a full-round action, instantly returning both minds to the proper bodies; if the yithian wishes, it may attempt to use its amnesia power on the other mind as a free action when it ends the mind swap in this way. With the aid of singular technological devices, yithians can swap minds with targets in other times as well, although this procedure often leaves the traveling minds disoriented for a period, so yithians use it only under controlled conditions. This is a mind-affecting effect. The save DC is Charisma-based.

Survivor Swarm (Ex) A future yithian's swarm body is composed of creatures evolved to survive cataclysmic destruction. It has a +4 racial bonus on saving throws against disease and poison and has improved evasion (as the rogue talent). In addition, when the swarm disperses (which the future yithian can choose to do as a free action), the yithian is not slain. 3d12 of its constituent beetles survive, and one of the beetles takes on the future yithian's consciousness (as described in beetle scout). The future yithian can shift its consciousness among these bodies but cannot reconstitute the swarm until it repopulates. A single survivor can spawn more beetles to replenish the swarm in 30 days (or fewer days, with the aid of multiple survivors).

Swarm Manipulation (Ex) A future yithian can form its constituent beetles into rudimentary limbs to manipulate objects as if it were a single Large creature. If expecting trouble, it generally uses this ability to wield a Yithian lightning gun.

Toxic Jet (Ex) A future yithian can shoot a jet of acid from up to eight of its component beetles at once with a range of 20 feet.

The Great Race of the Future

The great race has no interest in conquering humanoids. They have identified a future race—a species of beetle—as their next destination. These beetles live many millions of years in the future and are viewed by the great race as far superior to humanity for their future habitation.

The beetle-race is not gigantic, but small: no more than half a foot in length and weighing no more than 2-4 pounds. However this species is a gestalt—a group mind—and each grouping of several thousand beetles acts as a single individual. This also gives the beetles functional immortality: as a single beetle dies, new ones are born, and thus the gestalt goes on. Each beetle gestalt has thousands of manipulatory appendages, millions of sense organs, and untold billions of brain cells (each beetle’s brain combines into a great whole).

The beetle race is just as much the great race as the cone-shaped echinoderms of the Mesozoic (at least once they were conquered), but they are rarer, since travel into the distant future is typically rarer than into the past.

Yithian Technology

Yithian items function similarly to established magic items, but while the mechanics may not change, the item’s appearance often varies quite drastically from the item it emulates. For example, a yithian lightning gun looks like a strange camera-like array of lenses and metal calipers, but functions in-game identically to a rod of thunder and lightning.

A yithian item can be identified in the same ways as any magic item, but its strange nature imparts a –10 penalty to the Spellcraft check to comprehend the item. At the GM’s discretion, after some time spent among yithians or studying their technology, a character can eventually remove this penalty.

Non-yithians have difficulty manipulating yithian items, and in order to activate such an item, a non-yithian must make a successful DC 20 Dexterity or Sleight of Hand check (in addition to any Use Magic Device check or other skill check that might be required). If the check fails, the item does not function and the action is wasted. If this check fails by 5 or more, the item backfires dangerously and unpredictably.

Other species have been known to emulate yithian craftsmanship: for instance, a mi-go can use Knowledge (engineering) to craft yithian technology.

Sandy's Notes: Using Yithians

The true “weapon” of the great race of Yith is their knowledge of all times in all history. Thus, they have access to EVERYTHING ever developed by any species on the planet (and sometimes other planets). Did someone create a terrible artifact or impenetrable defense? The great race can duplicate it. Some genius member of their species has traveled in time, studied the process, and given the necessary information to their loremasters.